Marcovicci is just the voice to kick off ACT's new Bullitt Cabaret

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, September 20, 2007

Over the past century, cabaret has gone through several life cycles, occasionally being declared dead or dying -- like the novel, or the great film.

All are thriving today, as is cabaret. Indeed, it is in the midst of a nationwide renaissance on which ACT Theatre intends to capitalize, inaugurating a new cabaret series Friday night with one of the prime exponents of the genre: singer Andrea Marcovicci and her program, "Andrea Sings Astaire."

"We are hoping to make the Bullitt theater an ongoing cabaret," said ACT artistic director Kurt Beattie, "and Andrea Marcovicci is a way of highlighting this ambition. One of the reasons she is coming here is to help us create a sense of that space as a cabaret. That was the intention when we moved here (Kreielsheimer Place) in 1996, and on occasion it has been, along with solo shows, new-play festivals and readings."

A singer like Marcovicci emphasizes the intimacy of the space, he said. "You are really cheek-by-jowl with the performer, which changes the rules for the audience and creates a different experience. Whether you come to hear a singer or someone else, cabaret is always a beast, a wonderful beast, that pulls from all other art forms, often satirizing them or using them for their own kind of irony. Cabaret can be somewhat dangerous, where the satirical and ironic get to have to a voice, where the undoable can be done and the unsayable can be said."

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Cabaret is hard to define. It can be many things, depending on geography and cultural context, but it nearly always is found in a small urban space, often a nightclub. Its roots extend deep in European culture. It once was associated with corruption and vice. By the late 18th century, cabaret revolved around street musicians singing songs "in praise of wine and debauchery" and was frequented by men of letters. In England, coffeehouses often had a similar function.

A century later, in 1881, the celebrated Chat Noir opened in Paris, soon to be imitated by many others, particularly in Berlin (the Uberbrettl, founded in 1901, was the best known). That was the beginning of modern cabaret.

The founders of Chat Noir wanted their space to be a place where intellectuals and artists could meet, where wit and entertainment were coupled with political and social satire. Cabaret was supposed to provoke. Much was improvised and artistic innovation was rampant. In France, composers such as Debussy, Milhaud and Satie made contributions, as did Arnold Schoenberg in Germany. World War II brought that period to an end.

Beattie takes the broad view of modern cabaret. He sees it as including singers as varied as Marcovicci, Barbara Cook, Eartha Kitt, Karen Akers and Julie Wilson. These singers ply the waters at such stylish watering holes as Cafe Carlyle and The Oak Room in New York, Plush Room in San Francisco, Gardenia in Los Angeles and Davenport in Chicago.

Beattie also sees all of this in the context of a theatrical movement: "The current cabaret revival," he said, "started with the reinvigoration of older forms of street theater -- for instance, the new vaudeville movement that happened in the late 1960s and 1970s, with people like Bill Irwin and the (Flying) Karamazov Brothers. They had a spirit of anarchy found in street theater. Cabaret performers reinvent themselves, and new people continue to emerge, like those at the Moisture Festival in Ballard last winter. Performers were from everywhere. We presented some of the burlesque segments of that festival this past spring. We want to do more of that. These performers can be hilarious, funny and very good. (Teatro) ZinZanni is another example.

"Doing cabaret throughout the year," said Beattie, "is really a question of cost. You need to find a way to represent all these kinds of interesting acts from the well known to the less known in a way that makes sense financially. It's tricky. It's not a question of making a profit but breaking even. ... I like to think of Bullitt as a zone that encompasses all kinds of performance: burlesque and vaudeville, variety acts and, of course, singers like Andrea Marcovicci."

The spirit of Dada, the early 20th-century art movement that Marcel Duchamp described as a way of "ridding ourselves of cliches, of freeing ourselves," shouldn't be far away, Beattie said.